Partner Chris Carusone was mentioned in the PennEnergy article “Pennsylvania Independent Petroleum Producers Association files lawsuit challenging new Pennsylvania conventional oil & gas regulations,” in regards to his representation of the Pennsylvania Independent Petroleum Producers Association in their lawsuit against the state Department of Environmental Protection. The full article is available on the PennEnergy website.

The Pennsylvania Independent Petroleum Producers Association (PIPP) filed a lawsuit on March 24, 2016, in the Commonwealth court of Pennsylvania challenging the legality of controversial new regulations promulgated by the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board (EQB) on February 3, 2016, governing conventional oil and natural gas operations (Chapter 78).

The lawsuit alleges that the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the EQB violated Act 126 of 2014 by failing to promulgate regulations governing conventional oil and gas wells separately from regulations governing unconventional gas wells. As a result, the lawsuit alleges that PIPP’s members will be improperly subjected to many of the same rules applicable to billion-dollar, multinational corporations engaged in large-scale, unconventional (horizontal) drilling for natural gas.